Branding for Beginners

Before diving into these steps it is very important that you take time to cover the 2 prerequisites that are:

✅ Knowing your audience (Who are you talking to?)
✅ Defining your Unique Selling Proposition (Why do people buy from you instead of your competitors?)

"Defining your audience is the first prerequisite to building a successful visual brand identity. If you don’t know exactly who you’re speaking to, you won’t know what to say."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ To get specific about who your audience is by creating buyer personas

"Once you know your audience, you should understand what makes them tick, what value you are bringing to them. Why would your audience rather buy YOUR product than that of your competitors? What makes you different from all the other sellers in the market?"

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ 3 tips to help you discover and define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Now that we covered the 2 prerequisites, it’s time to dive into the heart of this training and discover the 15 steps you can follow to improve your visual identity.

⚠️ Make sure to respect the chronology

"In an online world, many brands face the challenge of expressing personality without actually interacting face to face. Whereas before your sales team or customer service would put a human face on your brand, online has created a barrier."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ To create a mood board to visualize your brand personality

"Associating your brand with positive emotions will help you connect with consumers. Providing an emotional context in marketing campaigns makes your message more engaging, and more impactful."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ About the most commonly used positive and negative emotions in brand strategies

"Your visual identity does not need to be complicated. When you have too many things going on, you run the risk of confusing your audience. Remember this one simple rule: Everything you do should make it easier for customers to understand what you do and how to do business with you.”

In this lesson you'll learn how to Keep it simple with:

✅ Images

✅ Words

✅ Videos

"Consistency lies in applying the same filter on your photos, publish images of the same size, use the same font across your visual platforms, etc. It creates cohesion, so that if a customer follows you on Facebook instead of Instagram, they still get the same story."

In this lesson you'll learn about:

✅ The 3 main reasons you want to create a consistent visual identity

"If I stumble upon your site, will I know what you offer? Am I going to click where you want me to click? One of the objectives you should keep in mind while developing your visual identity is to improve the user’s experience (UX). Good visual design can help you improve user experience."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ How to improve users' experience with good visual design

"When you go to Spain if you want to be perfectly understood, you’d better speak Spanish. The same rule applies to social media! You shouldn’t talk Twitter if you are marketing on Facebook!"

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ Why and How to adapt your content to each social media platform

"Visuals play an important part in social media branding. If each of your profiles looks like they’re owned by a different company, it creates a disconnect for your users. You want your branding to be consistent across all channels. This will help people immediately recognize your company no matter which site or app they’re using."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ A bunch of tips  to successfully develop your visual identity on social media

"I like to say that your logo is the face of your company, it is how you are recognized. Indeed it is the first thing people will see when you give them your business card or when they log on to your website. And let’s face it: we make judgments about people based on first impressions all the time."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ The 5 characteristics of a great logo

"The fonts that you choose to use in your branding are very important and will contribute to your customer's unconscious perception of your business."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ About the 4 different types of fonts

✅ How to choose a font combination for your visual identity

"The colors of your brand contribute to the unconscious perception that people have of your business. The use of color is a great way to make your business stand out and can help make your business more recognizable."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ How to choose from millions of possible colors

"Regardless of what color you choose for your branding, you should always consider what your design elements would look like in black and white. Parallel to the color consideration, you might want to think about size. Your design elements should still look good when reduced to a very small size."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ How to run the Black & White & Tiny Test

"The beauty of social media is that you can interact with your audience. Don’t let that go to waste. Use this opportunity to ask your audience what they think about your visual identity. Ask them if they like your colors, your logo or other visual elements you might use."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ How to engage your audience to collect their feedback

"Visuals have become a vital component in engaging our audiences. In my opinion the best and easiest way to get great visuals for your social media is to use templates."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ About the different advantages of working with templates

✅ What software to use to create your template

"One of the best ways to keep track of your visual brand identity is to keep a library of your exact specifications. You should always use the same fonts, sizes, colors, and image types. This is referred to as your brand style guide and we are going to have a look at one."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ What a brand style guide is

✅ The 6 elements that should be included in a brand style guide

"Canva is probably my favorite design app right now. I’ve been using it a to design all sorts of documents from facebook covers to slides for my powerpoint presentations. The platform is always evolving offering always more easy options for savvy and unsavvy designers alike."

In this lesson you'll learn:

✅ 4 reasons why you should use Canva

In this 3rd and last section of the training we are going to explore the various concepts of visual branding studied in the previous lessons through real life examples.

I have selected different companies and NGOs that I thought were doing a good job at:

✅ Being consistent with their visual identity and

✅ Differentiating themselves from their competitors by developing a visual style of their own.

In this lesson we will analyze the visual identity of Alaffia & comment on why we like it.

In this lesson we will analyze the visual identity of Alter Eco Pacific & comment on why we like it.

In this lesson we will analyze the visual identity of Pebble Child & comment on why we like it.

In this lesson we will analyze the visual identity of Fair Trade Original & comment on why we like it.